But that’s not the purpose…

… of HOV laws:

New bill allowing pregnant women to drive solo in the HOV lane sparks controversy

HOV/carpool laws are meant to conserve energy by encouraging people to carpool who would otherwise take separate cars. How does allowing pregnant women to use the HOV lane conserve energy? This is a common theme these days – twist a law to produce a secondary, unrelated effect in the name of “good cause” – in this case, “…helping expecting mothers get to where they need to get to in a fast, safe way…“.But what about me? Shouldn’t I be allowed to get where I want in a “…fast, safe way…”?

It’s the same way we get tax increases or extensions for “good causes” such as education (although such laws really only seem to help the teacher’s unions), child care, “green” issues, etc. But remember – these are still taxes, and every tax will eventually be paid for by the people.

There is simply no such thing as a “free” ride – even for a fetus.

Woe is me!

NYC Mayor Eric Adams is whining about receiving approximately 21,000 migrants since last year. Border towns like El Paso Texas receive nearly 30,000 in a single month. So let me see….. 21,000 per year vs. more than 300,000? RUFKM??

NYC Mayor Eric Adams pleads with White House for more help on migrant crisis

Adam’s solution? Put the federal government in charge of migrant travel, coordinating their movements so as to prevent their being shipped to NYC.

“I have a Republican governor dumping on my city,” Adams said.

Welcome to El Paso, where a Democrat President is dumping 1,000 illegal immigrants per day. By the way, based on the NYC population  at 8.8M and the U.S. at 330M, NYC should have received some 55,000 immigrants last year – not a paltry 21,000.

Suck it up, Mr. Mayor, and put on your big boy pants. If you want to limit illegal immigration to the Big Apple, then limit it for everywhere else, too. Tell your fellow Democrat President Biden to get control of the border!

Some old news first…

While I’ve been too busy to blog, I haven’t been too busy to make note of interesting stories upon which to comment. Here is a sampling of those I’ve been meaning to mention:

Lunacy in La La Land: And how many new hotels will be built in LA if this excuse for a law passes?

L.A. voters to decide whether hotels must rent vacant rooms to homeless people

Worker: “Do you want fries with that?”
Customer: “Do you offer financing?”

Governor Newsom Signs Legislation to Improve Working Conditions and Wages for Fast-Food Workers

Some feel that “…the meaning of a constitutional provision is fixed when it is adopted.”  As opposed to what? That it can and should be interpreted by politicians in whatever way best suits their needs? You can change the Constitution to introduce new ideas, but you can’t simply re-interpret it to introduce those ideas when you don’t have the votes.

Chemerinsky: Originalism has taken over the Supreme Court

Nanny-state central. What’s next – speed-limiting governors on all cars? Yep – no kidding:

NTSB Calls for Alcohol Detection Systems in All New Vehicles

Anti-racism = just more racism?

Portland art festival event is free to ‘Black folks’ but ‘$80 for all others’

San Francisco election director to be replaced after 20 years for racial diversity: reports

Five black police officers are alleged to have fatally beaten a black man. Whose at fault? Just one guess:

Jemele Hill claims Black people can ‘carry water’ for White supremacy: ‘You’re stuck on faces’

Perhaps our priorities are wrong?

In 2021, ~20,000 people died by homicide via firearm (another 26,000 died by by suicide via firearm, but that’s a completely different story…). The numbers have been rising dramatically since 2020, and even though the story linked above cites “systemic inequities” as a cause the solution the left proposes is – as usual – more gun laws. Because that, of course, fixes “systemic inequities”. In reality, the solution is to educate and elevate people so that they don’t want to kill each other, but hey – I guess making it harder for a law abiding citizen to protect themselves helps, too.

But I was surprised by another statistic – and by the response of the same left-leaning media pundits. In 2021 more than 106,000 people died of drug overdoses. The solution there, however, is not to make drugs harder to obtain; no, instead the solution is to make shooting up easier. Does this mean if we decriminalize gun possession and use by criminals that gun crime will drop, too?

In any event, 5 times more people died from drugs than homicide by firearm. Shouldn’t that help us prioritize our efforts onto the larger problem? Or is that just not politically correct these days?

 

I’ve been doing this all wrong…

I was reading an article this evening on Bari Weiss’ The Free Press (a site I highly recommend). It was written by Amanda Fortini, and described in part the idea (and I’m paraphrasing here) that most mainstream media stories are meant to either support or dispel a particular narrative. In hind site, I agree. And this describes my work here as well; I have been caught up in the same frenzied world of arguing narratives that really don’t reflect the real world. After reading Amanda’s article, I realize I should do better. And that the real world is far more interesting.

Read her article here.

And yet we trust them with our ballots?

The USPS is  dominated by union members; you don’t think their politics are skewed, or that workers are beyond letting their politics impact their job?

Stefanik campaign mail stolen while in USPS custody, $20,000 in donor checks allegedly lost

The most telling quote from this article?

A letter from the USPS to Stefanik’s campaign confirms its mail was “targeted for theft” at a USPS shipping center. 

Under the circumstances, do you really think it is wise to trust the post office to handle your ballot if you do not lean the same direction as the vast majority of their workers?

Yeah; me neither.